Rust Belt Arcana

Rust Belt Arcana
Author: Matt Stansberry
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2018-10-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781948742122

A young bear--The Fool--is cast off from its mother in the spring to wander a fragmented suburban forest, to be harried by dogs and traffic, chased through golf courses and farms. An ocean-going trout climbs industrial, sewage-tainted rivers in the Midwest. The river is both sick and healthy, the trout, understood here as The Magician, is both wild and made. What does the Tarot have to tell us about the flora and fauna of the industrial Midwest? Rust Belt Arcana uses this time-tested structure to explain, juxtaposing the characteristics of the cards of the Tarot's Major Arcana to the creatures and plants around us. The idiosyncratic essays that result connect biology and natural history to the human condition; they are stories of abundance and loss, limning the persistent remnant wilderness of the Rust Belt. Exploring this natural history helps us to see beauty in a beleaguered landscape often dismissed as unremarkable, and to define our remarkable place in it.

Perry's Arcana

Perry's Arcana
Author: Richard E. Petit
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2010
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1439901961

From 1810 to 1811, the English stonemason and amateur naturalist George Perry published a lavishly illustrated magazine on natural history. The Arcana or Museum of Nature ran to 22 monthly parts, with 84 extraordinary hand-colored plates and over 300 text pages describing mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, mollusks, echinoderms, insects, trilobites and plants, alongside travelogues from far-off lands. It presented the first published illustration of the koala and many new genera and species, but astonishingly was then largely forgotten for nearly two hundred years. Perry’s work was deliberately ignored by his contemporaries in England, as he was a supporter of Lamarck rather than of Linnaeus, and the Arcana’s rarity—only thirteen complete copies are known to have survived—has helped maintain its shroud of mystery. Now at last this neglected gem has been revived for scientists, students, and aficionados of natural history. New scholarship is combined with modern digital reproduction techniques to do full justice to the beautiful plates. An up-to-date account of all the species is given, along with a full collation and extensive notes, by the eminent natural historian Richard E. Petit. The Arcana is technically interesting too, as its glowing plates were printed with variously colored inks to suppress their outlines. Its appeal will extend not only to academic libraries and scholars specializing in various branches of natural history and the history of science, but also to collectors of beautiful natural history books and enthusiasts of Regency Britain.

The Spirit of Nature

The Spirit of Nature
Author: Henry Bellyse Baildon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1880
Genre: Evolution
ISBN:

Nature's Government

Nature's Government
Author: Richard Drayton
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780300059762

This daring attempt to juxtapose the histories of Britain, western science, and imperialism shows how colonial expansion, from the age of Alexander the Great to the 20th century, led to complex kinds of knowledge.